Strange Affair

“DC Jackman?” the unfamiliar voice inquired.

“That’s me.”

“PC Owen here, Heathrow.”

“Yes.”

“We just got a report in about a stolen vehicle, a dark blue Mondeo. I understand you were inquiring about it?”

“That’s right,” said Winsome, pencil in her hand. “Any news?”

“It’s not good, I’m afraid.”

“Go ahead.”

“The long version or the short one?”

“The short first.”

“It turned up in the early hours of Sunday morning on the A13 just outside of Basildon.”

“Where’s that?”

“Essex.”

“Excellent,” said Winsome. “Can we get a SOCO team over there?”

“Hold on a minute,” said Owen. “I haven’t finished yet. I said it had turned up, but what I didn’t get a chance to tell you was it was involved in an accident.”

“Accident?”

“Yes, the driver lost control and wrapped it around a telegraph pole. By all accounts he was going way too fast.”

“Do you have him in custody?”

“He’s in the mortuary.”

“Damn,” said Winsome. “Any identification on him?”

“Oh, we know who he was all right. His name’s Wesley Hughes. The bugger of it is he was only fifteen.”

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Winsome. “Just a kid. But what happened to our two men? The descriptions we have put them at way over fifteen.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that. We did get one lucky break, mind you: There was a passenger, and he was uninjured. Well, he got a few cuts and bruises, but the doc’s checked him out and he’s basically okay. A little shaken, though, as you can imagine.”

“How old is he?”

“Sixteen.”

“Have the local police questioned him?”

“I don’t know. It’s out of my hands now. If I were you I’d give them a ring. I’ve got the number. Sergeant Singh is handling it. Traffic.” He gave Winsome the number. She thanked him and hung up.

Next she rang Sergeant Singh of the Essex police at Basildon Divisional Headquarters. He answered immediately.

“Ah, yes, I’ve been expecting your call,” he said. “Just hold on a minute.” Winsome heard some muffled words, then Singh came back on the line. “Sorry about that. It gets a bit noisy in here.”

“That’s all right. What have you got?”

“A real mess is what.”

“Are we sure it’s the right Mondeo?” Singh gave her the number. It matched what she’d got from the Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency and the PNC. “PC Owen gave me the basics,” Winsome said. “Have you talked to the surviving boy yet?”

“Just. It took forever to track down his parents, and even when we found them they seemed more interested in opening another bottle of cheap wine than coming down to the station. No wonder the kids run wild. Anyway, he’s a cocky young bastard, name of Daryl Gooch, but the crash took some of the wind out of his sails and DI Sefton took the rest.”

“What’s his story?”

“According to him, he and his mate Wesley Hughes saw the car in Tower Hamlets, off Mile End Road, when they were coming home from a party at about half past three on Sunday morning.”

“Tower Hamlets?”

“Yeah, the East End.”

“I know where it is. I’m just surprised and confused, that’s all. I thought the car had been stolen from Heathrow on Friday by two men in their early forties who drove it up to Yorkshire to commit a murder in the early hours of Saturday morning. Now I find it was stolen from Tower Hamlets in the early hours of Sunday morning by two teenage joyriders. None of this makes any sense.”

“Well,” Singh went on, “I wouldn’t know about that, but this is how Daryl Gooch says it happened. Young Daryl said the driver’s door was open, the key was in the ignition and there was no one around, so him and his mate thought they’d have a little ride in the country. Pity his friend wasn’t a better driver. Witnesses say he was doing close to a hundred when he lost control. As far as I can gather from Daryl, they were still pissed and stoned from the party.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know,” said Singh, “but there’s not much advantage to him lying at this point, is there?”

“With some kids it’s habitual,” said Winsome.

“I suppose so. Anyway, both kids are from Tower Hamlets, so they’d have had no reason to be out at Heathrow. They’re not exactly your jet-setting types. Any idea exactly when the car was stolen from the car park there?”

“Not really,” said Winsome. “Sometime between Thursday and Friday evening, I suppose.”

“Sorry I can’t be any more help,” said Singh. “Ring me if you have any more questions.”

“Thanks,” said Winsome. “I will.”

She hung up and nibbled on the end of her pencil as she thought things out. Assuming it was the same Mondeo that had been spotted near Je

It was a good move to steal a car from a long-stay because the odds were good it hadn’t yet been reported stolen. If it had, there was always a chance that it might be picked up by a camera on the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system that reads and checks them against the database of stolen vehicles. But that hadn’t happened; the car’s owner didn’t report it stolen until Sunday evening, by which time it was wrapped around a telegraph pole outside Basildon.

Well, Winsome thought, even if there wasn’t much chance of finding trace evidence in the Mondeo now, at least they could check the tires, and there was always a chance that someone in Tower Hamlets had seen the men who dumped the car there. Time to get on the phone again.

Dr. Lukas’s office boasted the same calming decor as the rest of the Berger-Le

“It’s tragic about Je

“Yes,” A

“Not really. We worked together, that’s all. Our jobs are very different, of course, but we obviously had to meet regularly to ensure the smooth ru

“But you didn’t know her socially?”

Dr. Lukas managed a weak smile. “I don’t have much of a social life,” she said. “But, no, we didn’t meet socially, only at work.”

A

“As far as I know,” said Dr. Lukas. “The finances were Je

“Everyone tells me that Je

“We had one of our regular meetings last Wednesday,” Dr. Lukas said, “and come to think of it, she did seem a little on edge.”

“But you’ve no idea why?”

“I assumed it was man trouble, but as I said, I know nothing about her private life.”

“Why did you assume man trouble, then?”

The doctor smiled. She was a slight, thin figure, around forty, with short dark hair sprinkled with gray, hollow cheeks beneath the prominent bones and a tired look about her eyes. Her body language seemed tense, too tightly strung. “I shouldn’t jump to conclusions, I know,” she said, “but she was a very attractive woman, and I have seen her leave here with a man on a number of occasions.”